Engine and Gearbox Fitting

Saturday 25^th June

Fitted the engine & gearbox today, used the hired engine hoist to drop the engine into the chassis, used some wooden blocks (50mm depth) in place of the engine mounts so I could drill the holes. I got the missus to help me line the prop shaft up with the gearbox and wiggled it into place, went in quite easy. Once I was happy with the position I then drilled down through the wooden blocks and through the chassis, raised the engine off the wooden blocks, cleaned away all the sawdust and swarf, then dropped the rubber mounts in, bolted these up, used a trolley jack to hold the gearbox end up and then removed the engine hoist.

Fitted the gearbox mount, this went on easy enough.

Fitted the starter motor, it is really close to the chassis.

Will talk to tiger about this on Monday; think I may have to put some spacers under the mount to raise it up a few mm.

Fitted the alternator lower brackets, the fitted the alternator temporary in place so I could see where to the fit the top adjuster bracket, to fit this the throttle bodies need to be mounted as it bolts on to the 2 studs at the front end of the engine, these studs are part of the throttle bodies mounting. Reading through the Alpha throttle bodies fitting instructions it tells you to remove all the original studs / bolts in the head that the original inlet manifold fitted to and replace with the provided ones. I fitted 8 of the new ones and used the 2 original longer studs that where supplied with the original manifold (this is a brand new engine anyway so the studs have had no stress / pressure put on them yet) by using these longer studs I will have enough space to fit the throttle bodies and the spacers and bracket required for top alternator bracket. If you look at the picture below you can see the difference in the studs.

Fitted the extra pulley which was supplied by tiger, will need to cut the studs down though as the fan belt passes over where these are at the moment

Fitted the clutch cable, I made up a bracket to hold the cable secure in the engine bay, I lined the bracket with rubber to prevent any chaffing.

Fitted the pedal side with the nut and bolt setup, I passed the cable through the hole in the bell housing and then fitted the nipple end into the fork on the gearbox as I was adjusting this the pedal fell to floor, I had a look and noticed I had fitted the pedal bracket wrong way round, so the stop was on the back and not the front. Put this right and readjusted the cable, the clutch now works in a smooth motion.